Monday, October 31, 2005
Forget the Halloween costume. I look scary enough as it is.
After walking fifty blocks up and down Philadelphia, you would too. I had to walk from 38th St. to 12th St. and back, and then some from Sansom St. to Walnut St. What a perfect day to schedule a doctor's appointment in Center City. The whole intra-city public transporation system is down. Philly's roads are congested with traffic, pedestrians, loiterers, and poor college students as I speak. I'm divided as to where I stand on the SEPTA issue, but I know how my Halloween is going to be spent: studying, loitering around the library, terrorizing the computer labs, and trying to catch up on missed work. The one perk of the day was seeing the Philadelphia Stock Exhange on my way to the doctor. It was a small quaint little thing. You could maybe fit one elementary school inside. Don't you just love the holidays?
It's not easy being green
In response to a trivia question a friend asked me a while ago, I think Kermit is the Jim Henson Muppet character that suits me the best. He's small, green, shy, submissive, and cute -- the penultimate misunderstood frog. Yes, I think I like him the best...
I'm feeling lucky
I'm feeling lucky
Sunday, October 30, 2005
That strong, sweet, and supple quality
I SING the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?
The love of the Body of man or woman balks account—the body itself balks account;
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.
The expression of the face balks account;
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face;
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists;
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees—dress does not hide him;
The strong, sweet, supple quality he has, strikes through the cotton and flannel;
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more;
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.
--Walt Whitman, from I Sing the Body Electric
...I love the male form. I love its hard lines and angles. I love the sharp features of the face, and the musculature that reminds of ancient Greece and the classicism of Michelangelo’s statuary. It is the same beauty I see in Renaissance architecture, Calvin Klein ads, and those black-and-white vintage photos of sailors in V-day. Of course, one hides under “art,” the other under “history,” and the last under a consumer marketing ploy aimed at affluent “heterosexual” males. It’s all the same -- primally, instinctually, and artistically; though the social “validity” and quality of the art form varies.
…and so, today, I woke up with a boy and he was warm and soft to touch and cuddled underneath my blanket. I opened my eyes, noticed that he was on the other side of the bed, wondering what he was doing so far away from me, and then, pulled him closer so that I could smell him and feel him hugging me. Then, misty and droopy-eyed, I yawned silently and went back to sleep.
I'm feeling lucky:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Yo7omlFkg1cC&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=noel+darlucio+pura&source=bl&ots=9wbhihIjrc&sig=1NF47bvSDd1TsTzwoHx2VbxakuQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=kpevUcr4Iam80gH9p4H4Ag&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=noel%20darlucio%20pura&f=false
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?
The love of the Body of man or woman balks account—the body itself balks account;
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.
The expression of the face balks account;
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face;
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists;
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees—dress does not hide him;
The strong, sweet, supple quality he has, strikes through the cotton and flannel;
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more;
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.
--Walt Whitman, from I Sing the Body Electric
...I love the male form. I love its hard lines and angles. I love the sharp features of the face, and the musculature that reminds of ancient Greece and the classicism of Michelangelo’s statuary. It is the same beauty I see in Renaissance architecture, Calvin Klein ads, and those black-and-white vintage photos of sailors in V-day. Of course, one hides under “art,” the other under “history,” and the last under a consumer marketing ploy aimed at affluent “heterosexual” males. It’s all the same -- primally, instinctually, and artistically; though the social “validity” and quality of the art form varies.
…and so, today, I woke up with a boy and he was warm and soft to touch and cuddled underneath my blanket. I opened my eyes, noticed that he was on the other side of the bed, wondering what he was doing so far away from me, and then, pulled him closer so that I could smell him and feel him hugging me. Then, misty and droopy-eyed, I yawned silently and went back to sleep.
I'm feeling lucky:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Yo7omlFkg1cC&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=noel+darlucio+pura&source=bl&ots=9wbhihIjrc&sig=1NF47bvSDd1TsTzwoHx2VbxakuQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=kpevUcr4Iam80gH9p4H4Ag&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=noel%20darlucio%20pura&f=false
Thursday, October 27, 2005
B.D. Wong
B.D. Wong came to my school today for Asian Pacific American Heritage Week. He’s a pleasant guy. Much more interesting in person than on the screen. Unbelievably casual and funny, and much more intelligent than his roles typically display. He’s about the only attractive Asian-American male I’ve seen on TV, which understandably, means something to me living here (take it for what you will).
Taken from: http://www.glbtq.com/arts/wong_bd.html
The only actor to win the Tony Award, the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Clarence Derwent Award, and the Theater World Award for the same performance, Asian-American actor B. D. Wong came to prominence with his extraordinary performance in the title role of David Hwang's M. Butterfly (1988).
Wong's film roles have varied from a campy caterer in The Father of the Bride (1991) to a geneticist in Jurassic Park (1993) and a member of an elite anti-terrorist unit in Executive Decision (1996). He was happy to supply the voice of Captain Li Shang in the Disney animated feature Mulan (1998) because the story was one Wong had learned as a child from his parents. He repeated the role in the 2004 sequel Mulan II.
Wong has also appeared in the off-Broadway production of the Irving Berlin-Moss Hart musical As Thousands Cheer (1998) and as Linus in the Broadway revival of the musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1999). He has made dozens of guest appearances on television series such as Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Chicago Hope, Sesame Street, and The X-Files.
Taken from: http://www.glbtq.com/arts/wong_bd.html
The only actor to win the Tony Award, the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Clarence Derwent Award, and the Theater World Award for the same performance, Asian-American actor B. D. Wong came to prominence with his extraordinary performance in the title role of David Hwang's M. Butterfly (1988).
Wong's film roles have varied from a campy caterer in The Father of the Bride (1991) to a geneticist in Jurassic Park (1993) and a member of an elite anti-terrorist unit in Executive Decision (1996). He was happy to supply the voice of Captain Li Shang in the Disney animated feature Mulan (1998) because the story was one Wong had learned as a child from his parents. He repeated the role in the 2004 sequel Mulan II.
Wong has also appeared in the off-Broadway production of the Irving Berlin-Moss Hart musical As Thousands Cheer (1998) and as Linus in the Broadway revival of the musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1999). He has made dozens of guest appearances on television series such as Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Chicago Hope, Sesame Street, and The X-Files.
Five Things
Five Things I can Rely On in Life
(1) Good, old, filling Chinese food: typical college fare
(2) An Apple succeeding where other computers have failed: more on this later, but keep in mind that for the past three years I've had a Compaq, or a Compsuck as I like to call it.
(3) index funds: goodbye volatility!
(4) Mike!
(5) coffee: understood
I'm feeling lucky
:-)
(1) Good, old, filling Chinese food: typical college fare
(2) An Apple succeeding where other computers have failed: more on this later, but keep in mind that for the past three years I've had a Compaq, or a Compsuck as I like to call it.
(3) index funds: goodbye volatility!
(4) Mike!
(5) coffee: understood
I'm feeling lucky
:-)
The Google Zeitgeist
Check it out.
If the Dow Jones and the S&P500 are indices of the stock market, than the Google Zeitgeist is supposedly an index of our culture. It's a collection of the most popular search queries in a given time period, and potentially, a given concern or obsession of our time. Want to know if something is a fad? Then look for "Survivor" or "American Idol" in the Declining Queries list. Look for "World Trade Center" and "Osama bin Laden" after 9/11, and for fun, look for "Nostradamus" around Y2K. Interesting, no?
BTW, Zeitgeist means: the spirit of the time; the taste and outlook characteristic of a period or generation -- at least according to dictionary.com. It comes from the German words Zeit (time) and Geist (spirit), like Poltergeist. :-)
Congratulations to our winners!
http://www.drew.edu/english/prizes-and-awards
If the Dow Jones and the S&P500 are indices of the stock market, than the Google Zeitgeist is supposedly an index of our culture. It's a collection of the most popular search queries in a given time period, and potentially, a given concern or obsession of our time. Want to know if something is a fad? Then look for "Survivor" or "American Idol" in the Declining Queries list. Look for "World Trade Center" and "Osama bin Laden" after 9/11, and for fun, look for "Nostradamus" around Y2K. Interesting, no?
BTW, Zeitgeist means: the spirit of the time; the taste and outlook characteristic of a period or generation -- at least according to dictionary.com. It comes from the German words Zeit (time) and Geist (spirit), like Poltergeist. :-)
Congratulations to our winners!
http://www.drew.edu/english/prizes-and-awards
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Biotech Blues
Pfizer (PFE) is down to $21 a share. It was at $25 in the beginning of October. At the height of the mid-summer heat in June, it was at $29 a share. The stock has taken a hit but the company is actually still strong, with varenincline completing Phase III. I wanted to buy some shares of the company this week, but Sharebuilder wouldn’t let me, because it was already past 2pm Pacific Standard Time. I hate how Sharebuilder is trying to make me an investor when I’m actually more of a trader, but I have to stick with it for now because I’m still a poor college student. I have to wait till next week to buy PFE. Pfizer better stay at $21, at least until I buy it. For those of you with no shares in the biotech industry, now would be a great time to join. Biotech stocks are dirt cheap now, but they won’t be for long. Buy a couple of shares of Amgen, Genentech, or Merck; or Proctor & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson if you find prescription drugs too risky.
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Time and the hour run through the roughest day
--Willy Shakes
What a glorious weekend this was: dancing, partying, carousing Philadelphia, running in the rain, and leaving a club with a crowd of people I just met fifteen minutes ago. This must be what youth is: to embrace spontaneity and expect the unexpected, but the best part of it was also that Mike was there with me, letting me feel loved in a crowd of anonymous bodies and letting me know that I could always bail out if things didn’t go exactly according to plan. Mike came to visit me this Friday and left this morning, and today was a mess of hurrying, scuffling, and going over train schedules. Then, the library and what seems like endless amounts of work: capital venture problem set, term project, and mid-term exam Tuesday. Sometimes I feel like life goes so fast, I have to run just to catch up with it. I have meetings upon meetings to schedule, and doctors, professors, and study groups to visit. I’m glad that Mike takes the time to visit me knowing I can’t quite visit him. The trip takes at least three hours, it’s taxing and disheartening, but he doesn’t complain. He just calls every once in awhile and I get to listen to his warm, cuddly voice on the phone. Last time I was swamped with work and had to study for an exam, and what does he do? He comes over in the rain, stays in my apartment doing laundry and folding clothes, and waits for me to come back and have dinner three hours later. If people were selections of food, he’d be a layered sponge cake: warm, sweet, and filling! There just isn’t enough sugar in the world to make another boy like that. You know that saying about “breaking the mold”? Well, at the very real risk of sounding corny, I’d say it was a cupcake pan.
What a glorious weekend this was: dancing, partying, carousing Philadelphia, running in the rain, and leaving a club with a crowd of people I just met fifteen minutes ago. This must be what youth is: to embrace spontaneity and expect the unexpected, but the best part of it was also that Mike was there with me, letting me feel loved in a crowd of anonymous bodies and letting me know that I could always bail out if things didn’t go exactly according to plan. Mike came to visit me this Friday and left this morning, and today was a mess of hurrying, scuffling, and going over train schedules. Then, the library and what seems like endless amounts of work: capital venture problem set, term project, and mid-term exam Tuesday. Sometimes I feel like life goes so fast, I have to run just to catch up with it. I have meetings upon meetings to schedule, and doctors, professors, and study groups to visit. I’m glad that Mike takes the time to visit me knowing I can’t quite visit him. The trip takes at least three hours, it’s taxing and disheartening, but he doesn’t complain. He just calls every once in awhile and I get to listen to his warm, cuddly voice on the phone. Last time I was swamped with work and had to study for an exam, and what does he do? He comes over in the rain, stays in my apartment doing laundry and folding clothes, and waits for me to come back and have dinner three hours later. If people were selections of food, he’d be a layered sponge cake: warm, sweet, and filling! There just isn’t enough sugar in the world to make another boy like that. You know that saying about “breaking the mold”? Well, at the very real risk of sounding corny, I’d say it was a cupcake pan.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
"I was in the German Club. There were only three of us, and then two of us left to join the French Club after seeing 'Schindler's List.'"
Thank god this day is over! Now I can sit back, read blogs, watch The Gilmore Girls and be a couch potato for the next several hours. Today was tough. I woke up at 5 am to go the library and finish my Statistics and Entrepreneurship homework, which I found particularly long because we have a Statistics exam Monday, and then I had to prepare for a CEO coming to Penn to talk to my Entrepreneurship class, this time for a medical devices company.
Entrepreneurship announcement:
Today’s guest speaker is Michael Cannon, co-founder and president of Ecton, Inc. Ecton was founded in 1996 with the goal of developing “technologies which allow cardiac ultrasound to become a screening and monitoring tool, instead of merely an expensive diagnostic laboratory method.” Ecton was acquired by Acuson Corporation in 1999, which in turn was acquired by Siemens Medical Engineering Group in 2000. Mr. Cannon led the Ecton team through both acquisitions.
That was interesting, don’t get me wrong, but seeing as how I had to wake up at 5 to prepare for two classes, I didn’t have much to go on afterwards. Then, I went to the lab to section some embryos. Dr. Tremblay is letting me work with her samples now. I don’t just section practice embryos from now on. Then I went to my statistics recitation to look at last year’s mid-term exam. I’ve been absolutely mortified about it for several days now, but looking at last year’s exam partially put my fears to rest. It is definitely manageable, and I think the probability of me doing well is rather high. Let’s see me calculate that Dr. Ewens! I’m absolutely burned out from the past three days. It was supposed to be our fall break, but I don’t think it really applied to graduate students. My pharmacology class still met Monday and Tuesday, and our new lecturer for arachidonic acid metabolites and anti-inflammatory drugs strikes me as a bit of an academic dominatrix (but don’t tell her I ever said that!). To top it off, my shares have been rather turbulent. All of these recent hurricanes have done a number to oil prices and the natural resources sector. I wonder how it will continue to affect the market, but so far, the financial services industries I’ve been tracking seem to be rather stable.
I’m just going to put all my worries aside for the moment and watch The Gilmore Girls. I was introduced to it several years ago, but I could never make the listed times to watch it. Now that I’ve found a place to rent the DVD’s, I actually can. TV has disappointed me for the most part, but The Gilmore Girls is a great show. It’s so much better than Dawson’s Creek, which my sister used to watch and which I absolutely hated. That entire show focused on the melodramatic relationships of moody teens trying to hook up with one another, and once each guy dated each girl in every possible combination you could imagine, they exhausted all of their possibilities and had to constantly showcase “new talent” to keep it going. The Gilmore Girls is different. It has substance, character, sincerity, comedy, and witty repartee! But what am I doing writing about it? I should be watching!
I'm feeling lucky:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Yo7omlFkg1cC&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=noel+darlucio+pura&source=bl&ots=9wbhihIjrc&sig=1NF47bvSDd1TsTzwoHx2VbxakuQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=kpevUcr4Iam80gH9p4H4Ag&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=noel%20darlucio%20pura&f=false
Entrepreneurship announcement:
Today’s guest speaker is Michael Cannon, co-founder and president of Ecton, Inc. Ecton was founded in 1996 with the goal of developing “technologies which allow cardiac ultrasound to become a screening and monitoring tool, instead of merely an expensive diagnostic laboratory method.” Ecton was acquired by Acuson Corporation in 1999, which in turn was acquired by Siemens Medical Engineering Group in 2000. Mr. Cannon led the Ecton team through both acquisitions.
That was interesting, don’t get me wrong, but seeing as how I had to wake up at 5 to prepare for two classes, I didn’t have much to go on afterwards. Then, I went to the lab to section some embryos. Dr. Tremblay is letting me work with her samples now. I don’t just section practice embryos from now on. Then I went to my statistics recitation to look at last year’s mid-term exam. I’ve been absolutely mortified about it for several days now, but looking at last year’s exam partially put my fears to rest. It is definitely manageable, and I think the probability of me doing well is rather high. Let’s see me calculate that Dr. Ewens! I’m absolutely burned out from the past three days. It was supposed to be our fall break, but I don’t think it really applied to graduate students. My pharmacology class still met Monday and Tuesday, and our new lecturer for arachidonic acid metabolites and anti-inflammatory drugs strikes me as a bit of an academic dominatrix (but don’t tell her I ever said that!). To top it off, my shares have been rather turbulent. All of these recent hurricanes have done a number to oil prices and the natural resources sector. I wonder how it will continue to affect the market, but so far, the financial services industries I’ve been tracking seem to be rather stable.
I’m just going to put all my worries aside for the moment and watch The Gilmore Girls. I was introduced to it several years ago, but I could never make the listed times to watch it. Now that I’ve found a place to rent the DVD’s, I actually can. TV has disappointed me for the most part, but The Gilmore Girls is a great show. It’s so much better than Dawson’s Creek, which my sister used to watch and which I absolutely hated. That entire show focused on the melodramatic relationships of moody teens trying to hook up with one another, and once each guy dated each girl in every possible combination you could imagine, they exhausted all of their possibilities and had to constantly showcase “new talent” to keep it going. The Gilmore Girls is different. It has substance, character, sincerity, comedy, and witty repartee! But what am I doing writing about it? I should be watching!
I'm feeling lucky:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Yo7omlFkg1cC&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=noel+darlucio+pura&source=bl&ots=9wbhihIjrc&sig=1NF47bvSDd1TsTzwoHx2VbxakuQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=kpevUcr4Iam80gH9p4H4Ag&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=noel%20darlucio%20pura&f=false
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Wickedly
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a Wicked Witch of Oz?...
To my dear sister, the Wicked Witch of the West,
I’ve been evading falling houses since that accident with the tornado spell last spring. A cow fell on me and It’s put a bit of a dent in my walk I’m afraid. I can hardly ride my broomstick straight anymore! I was very happy to receive your letter though. Adjusting to a new place can be tough -- poisoning all the new apples, terrorizing the village locals, sacrificing a virgin munchkin here and there. It really puts quite a strain on your back! I’ve been very busy with my new shift at Emerald City. I can’t seem to find the time to write spells or curses anymore, which is horrendous since I used to major in scroll-writing and enchantments. I thank you for the polymorph potion. I haven’t had a good draught of that since I was a little witch in school!
I’m glad to know that Witching School is going well for you. I hear you’re taking thaumaturgy, eh? I know you can handle it. Have you gotten into chopping up any corpses yet? That’s always been something I’ve wanted to do, getting to know humans from the “inside.” I’ve always wanted to feel a human brain pulsating from the meninges... but that’s a story for later, and I bet you’re still busy from trying to find a heart for that tin experiment you’ve been working on.
It’s great that you’ve met Mr. E. Wizard. He used to be my bench-mate at WWU (Witches and Wizards University). We used to collect bat wings and make hell potions together, but he was always full of hot air and wild fantastical stories. I haven’t seen him in ages!
As for me, I’m holding up well. Emerald City is all I’ve imagined it to be, but it’s a bit hard sometimes to find the time to do the things you love to do, like writing new hexes under the full night moon, or taking a lonely flying monkey out for a stroll. Though I’m in the city now, I find that I spend most of my time in the Enchanted Forest, collecting plants and mushrooms to throw in my tiny little cauldron. I haven’t made as many friends as I thought I would, but I know of this one wizard who likes to copy down spells from the Ancients Wing of the Library, and I hear that the Witch of the South is studying mythological animals in a cave not too far off mine. I may just visit her to borrow a cup of dragon’s blood and sugar one day. Who knows? Maybe we’ll even rent a tower out together.
Overall life can be a bit tough in the Emerald City, but I like it. I never have to worry about finding something to match my green skin anymore. Do you remember how hard that used to be? Sometimes when I’m tired and groggy and have finished making all my potions for the day, I sit down and think about my old life in Munchkin Land and all the wonderful things I used to do there. I don’t think I really appreciated it at the time, but all the things I needed were there -- my hazelwood broomstick, my dungeon made of yellow bricks, the half-pint subservients, and even a personal army of crows I started from scratch! Then, of course, there was you: my dear wicked sister, to come home to and cook villagers with. It’s different down here in Emerald City. You get bored from looking at green gemstones all day, and you’ll eventually have to get sunglasses to protect yourself from the glare of all the bright inhabitants! I’ll probably never get a full night’s sleep here from all the terrorizing they have me doing, but thankfully, the city never sleeps itself. The Emerald library is brimming with young witches, wizards, and other late-nighters like myself, and at least I don’t feel the boredom anymore of being an overworked witch in an understaffed province of the country.
I’m currently studying advanced potions making and magical alterations, which seem to go hand in hand. I’m taking a global enchantments course too, which is interesting because now they have us summoning large tornados and hurricanes. Who knows how good I’ll get at it? I may get powerful enough to lift a house one day. Do tell me about your life in Munchkin Land. I’m so grateful that you’ve decided to take over my shift. I’m beginning to miss the place more and more each day. I think of it now as the kind of place a witch would like to grow old and die in one day... but, enough talk about that. Write back to me, and come visit your lonely wicked old sister in the city.
Missing you wickedly,
The Wicked Witch of the East
To my dear sister, the Wicked Witch of the West,
I’ve been evading falling houses since that accident with the tornado spell last spring. A cow fell on me and It’s put a bit of a dent in my walk I’m afraid. I can hardly ride my broomstick straight anymore! I was very happy to receive your letter though. Adjusting to a new place can be tough -- poisoning all the new apples, terrorizing the village locals, sacrificing a virgin munchkin here and there. It really puts quite a strain on your back! I’ve been very busy with my new shift at Emerald City. I can’t seem to find the time to write spells or curses anymore, which is horrendous since I used to major in scroll-writing and enchantments. I thank you for the polymorph potion. I haven’t had a good draught of that since I was a little witch in school!
I’m glad to know that Witching School is going well for you. I hear you’re taking thaumaturgy, eh? I know you can handle it. Have you gotten into chopping up any corpses yet? That’s always been something I’ve wanted to do, getting to know humans from the “inside.” I’ve always wanted to feel a human brain pulsating from the meninges... but that’s a story for later, and I bet you’re still busy from trying to find a heart for that tin experiment you’ve been working on.
It’s great that you’ve met Mr. E. Wizard. He used to be my bench-mate at WWU (Witches and Wizards University). We used to collect bat wings and make hell potions together, but he was always full of hot air and wild fantastical stories. I haven’t seen him in ages!
As for me, I’m holding up well. Emerald City is all I’ve imagined it to be, but it’s a bit hard sometimes to find the time to do the things you love to do, like writing new hexes under the full night moon, or taking a lonely flying monkey out for a stroll. Though I’m in the city now, I find that I spend most of my time in the Enchanted Forest, collecting plants and mushrooms to throw in my tiny little cauldron. I haven’t made as many friends as I thought I would, but I know of this one wizard who likes to copy down spells from the Ancients Wing of the Library, and I hear that the Witch of the South is studying mythological animals in a cave not too far off mine. I may just visit her to borrow a cup of dragon’s blood and sugar one day. Who knows? Maybe we’ll even rent a tower out together.
Overall life can be a bit tough in the Emerald City, but I like it. I never have to worry about finding something to match my green skin anymore. Do you remember how hard that used to be? Sometimes when I’m tired and groggy and have finished making all my potions for the day, I sit down and think about my old life in Munchkin Land and all the wonderful things I used to do there. I don’t think I really appreciated it at the time, but all the things I needed were there -- my hazelwood broomstick, my dungeon made of yellow bricks, the half-pint subservients, and even a personal army of crows I started from scratch! Then, of course, there was you: my dear wicked sister, to come home to and cook villagers with. It’s different down here in Emerald City. You get bored from looking at green gemstones all day, and you’ll eventually have to get sunglasses to protect yourself from the glare of all the bright inhabitants! I’ll probably never get a full night’s sleep here from all the terrorizing they have me doing, but thankfully, the city never sleeps itself. The Emerald library is brimming with young witches, wizards, and other late-nighters like myself, and at least I don’t feel the boredom anymore of being an overworked witch in an understaffed province of the country.
I’m currently studying advanced potions making and magical alterations, which seem to go hand in hand. I’m taking a global enchantments course too, which is interesting because now they have us summoning large tornados and hurricanes. Who knows how good I’ll get at it? I may get powerful enough to lift a house one day. Do tell me about your life in Munchkin Land. I’m so grateful that you’ve decided to take over my shift. I’m beginning to miss the place more and more each day. I think of it now as the kind of place a witch would like to grow old and die in one day... but, enough talk about that. Write back to me, and come visit your lonely wicked old sister in the city.
Missing you wickedly,
The Wicked Witch of the East
Thursday, October 13, 2005
anticipations
Tomorrow night, for my entrepreneurship class, my professor and some of his friends assembled a team of business leaders and professionals to visit the class. They’re going to be discussing start-up strategies for new companies and how they grew their own businesses. I’m going to be meeting a CEO of a software publishing company, a CTO (chief technology officer) of an information technology company, a co-founder of an agricultural products biotech company, a CEO of a medical devices biotech company, a Chairman of an integrated health management company, and a CEO of an Asian-American Bank. It’s going to be quite intense and I’m expecting it to be very well attended. I’m so excited! How am I going to get any sleep!
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
First Muse
I may never make it big, but after a long day of work, I should be content to sit down, have a pleasant cup of coffee, and take my day into perspective. Science may be my new life now, but there is a world outside of it too. Stepping into the hard streets of the city, watching the window displays, waiting for the traffic lights to turn green, I remind myself that there is a life outside of the university. It seems so far to me now, but I’ll have to live with it one day, call it my home, and hope that it will take me in. Fear of the world wraps around me like a blanket. Even within these walls I fear I’m not content. I go to class, do my work, and hand in my papers dearly hoping to have it come back to me with an A. I know what I’m doing, but it’s just that I fear becoming a number -- that’s what it is. That’s the danger of becoming a science major. Coming from where I’m coming from, I fear that I’ve lost my voice. I have no time to read literature or write. I must accept now that I’m no longer an English major. This is the path I’ve chosen, it is what I want, and I must write only when my work allows. Writing used to be my work, but it is no longer my career. Biology is. Science will buy me a nice home and put food on the table. For that I can live with myself. I can write when I finally feel secure, and that time will come eventually, just not today. Sometimes I miss the romance of being an artist -- living on a whim, observing the small details -- thinking that I was better than other people, that I saw more than them, and that somehow this gave me more of a right to live than they do. There’s more to being a poet than that of course. I know that kind of thinking is flawed and the kind of thinking a writer would have in high school -- but I encountered it first entering this field, and now that I’m leaving it, I acknowledge it for what it is. I am convinced that poets do live intensely, and yes, I want that for myself as well. I always have. I just can’t embrace it wholly. I have to compromise. I have a need to feel useful and to make money. As much as I like poetry, there are times when I feel it is unread, and I would be under-appreciated. I think that my time would be better spent doing something else, and so I turn to researching drugs and trying to help people. Poetry helps people as well, but it’s hard to convince myself of that when I am down, and I just can’t get over the fear of never making it at all. I think I am doing what is best for now. I am putting my other interests on hold, but with the promise to pick it up again one day. I like it too much to give it up. It’s a part of me, and it comes out when it needs to. When I lose my voice is when I lose my soul, and that is when I become another number-crunching, data-generating machine. I don’t want that. I’ll never become that. I like the “humanism” of work too much for that, and I think that work should bring people together more so than it alienates them. I like writing. I like doing this at the end of the day. It helps me reclaim that part of me that is unique, something no one else can claim, and then I am no longer a name on a list competing for a grade, but a person. I’m not just merely the sum of my clothes, my grades, or my networth, but a person with ideas, aspirations, and fears. I am myself -- but who, if not for my writing, would ever know that?
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